Books and Pies and Presents! Oh, My!

 

Things have been a little crazy around Chez Harden. DH and his sisters have been attempting to clean out their parents' house for the last several months. That task slowed way down when Sister #2 broke her wrist at the end of August.

So they busted their butts last weekend and plan to do so again this coming weekend. And I'll be hosting our Christmas dinner Saturday night. I'm catering the dinner, and maybe I'll make a pie or two if I have the time on Friday. Which honestly is looking doubtful at the moment.

In the meantime, DH wanted to replace the Christmas tree that drowned in last year's unintentional indoor swimming pool. The new one looks vaguely purple-ish in the photo, but it's a white tree with lights that can be blue (current mode) or white, blinking or not. It looks quite nice without any ornaments. I was surprised he picked something so non-traditional, but then, I want to get a black tree for the library once it's set up. A black tree with white lights to display my collection of of Star Trek ship ornaments.

Unfortunately, with everything else going on, I'm racing around trying to finish my holiday shopping since I have three days left. There was a time I'd have everything done by Thanksgiving, including shipping the out-of-state presents.

Since Invasion!'s release got screwed up, I'm taking the opportunity to review it for typos one last time. Death in Double Mocha is making progress finally. And then this morning, I received a private invitation to submit a short story for a holiday anthology for next year, which the publisher needs by the end of this week.

I have to admit things are never dull in my life.